(6999) Meitner

Named in memory of Lise Meitner (1878–1968), Austrian nuclear physicist. Meitner was only the second woman to receive a doctorate from the University of Vienna, where she had been much inspired by Boltzmann. In 1912 she joined the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut in Berlin. Her collaboration with the director, Otto Hahn {see planet (19126)}, resulted in the discovery of protactinium, thereby demonstrating the existence of uranium–235. In 1938 Meitner moved to Stockholm, where, with her nephew, Otto Frisch, she explained the presence of barium in the neutron-bombardment experiments of Hahn and Strassmann {see planet (19136)} as due to fission, a term they coined. (M 27464)